Astrogator's Logs

[Note: the video that shows the incident I am about to describe has gone viral. I won’t link to any of its versions, because most of the comments are literally nauseating. ]

On Wednesday, Hellenic TV station Ant1 held a discussion roundtable with parliamentary members from six of the seven major political parties. Among them were two women: 38-year old Réna Dhoúrou of SYRIZA, the leftist party that came unexpectedly a very close second in the May elections, upsetting the usual cozy arrangements; and 58-year old Liána Kanélli of KKE, the Communist party (the only one in the world that’s still staunchly Stalinist, but that’s another conversation). Kanélli is notorious – an outspoken, spirited, if arrogant firebrand, widely considered to be a lesbian (bear with me, this becomes relevant anon). As a reporter, she was the first woman in many media venues. Also invited to the talk show was 31-year-old Elías Kasidhiáris, deputy of the neo-nazi party Golden Dawn.

For those sequestered in silently running nuclear submarines, Golden Dawn got 7% of the vote in the May elections, gaining seats in the parliament – the first time such a thing has happened since World War II (not counting the junta). Its platform is the standard troglodytic garbage: ethnic purity, “natural” order – which includes the de jure disenfranchisement of women and Others – and bodily violence against those who disagree. Its members regularly assault immigrants, minorities and journalists as well as other “undesirables”, with tolerance (if not cooperation) from the police and portions of the media. Mass murderer Anders Breivik listed Golden Dawn in his diary as the likeliest group to “cleanse” Europe.

It came as no surprise that the vast majority of the half million who voted for Golden Dawn were people craving “law and order” in a country that increasingly lacks the resources to deal effectively and humanely with its flood of illegal immigrants… and policemen. Kasidhiáris himself is on trial for participating in the robbery and stabbing of an academic in 2007 (as is customary with Hellenic justice, the trial has been repeatedly postponed). Yet this did not prevent him from running and getting elected for national office.

To anyone speaking Hellenic, it becomes obvious when you watch the video that Kasidhiáris was as well-informed as Sarah Palin. The two women, Kanélli in particular, let him know this. His response was standard: first he accused them of bringing “personal matters” (namely, his impending trial) into politics. Then, after a brief exchange of verbal insults, he flung a glass of water at Dhoúrou’s face. The three male politicians present sat through this like statues while the talk host made feeble mewling noises. The only one who did something was Kanélli, who went toward Kasidhiáris brandishing a newspaper.

To show that he doesn’t take guff from uppity broads, even ones old enough to be his mother, Kasidhiáris jumped out of his seat and hit Kanélli three times. On the face. The first was a slap. The other two were left-right closed-fist punches.

He then threatened he would “return with reinforcements” and somehow managed to escape from the TV station to “parts unknown” (almost certainly the offices of Golden Dawn) to avoid the automatic arrest warrant for assault which, by a quirk of Hellenic law, expires within 48 hours of its issue. The police, not surprisingly, have been “unable to find him” – even though he issued a lengthy (and presumably traceable) statement from his ultra-secret location, in which he said that Kanélli should be the one to be arrested and face assault charges because she “attacked him first”. The head of his party stuck by him, arguing that the incident had been blown out of proportion and, in any case, the two women are really to blame because, well, they provoked him and what’s a manly man to do except respond (literally) two-fistedly?

Sound familiar? The tactics of cowardly bullies do not change across time and cultures. Yet even more mind-boggling is the enormous number of people who opined anonymously online that “the cunt had it coming” and “finally, someone put the fat ugly dyke in her place.” Kanélli infuriates many people because she won’t shut up or back down; she has been bodily attacked before as a symbol of “corrupt politics”, even though her party has never governed the country (incidentally, I disagree with many of her positions, but that’s irrelevant to this discussion).

So the obvious solution to society’s ills is to beat this outspoken woman until she stops speaking, the traditional “remedy” for termagants who do not exhibit the feminine virtues of compliance and silence. When this happens people cheer gleefully, not realizing that thugs like Kasidhiáris make no distinctions: everything around them gets smashed. Women are just the canaries in this particular mine. They are the first to become non-humans whenever fascism raises its banner, making hatred and fear steeds for its chariot. Kanélli made the point explicitly after the assault: “It happened to be my face,” she said, “but there are many faces that get hit by these people – faces of weak and scared victims that we never see.”

The only good thing about this incident, the latest of many, is that it may act as a wake-up call to all those who thought they were striking a blow against the despised political status quo by voting for Golden Dawn. Democracy has always been wobbly in the land that invented it. My parents lived through repression and persecution; I lived through the colonels’ junta. I don’t want to see my people repeat the horrific mistake of giving power to beasts who wear the skins of humans.

Update 1: A representative of the Cypriot equivalent of Golden Dawn was asked on TV, “Do you consider it right to hit a woman?” His response: “Do you consider Kanélli a woman?” Beyond confirming how neo-nazis define “real” women, this particular rabid dog also conveniently elided that being “womanly” has never protected women from getting beaten, raped or killed.

Update 2: The head of Golden Dawn stated that Kasidhiáris didn’t hit Kanélli, he “just kept her at a distance with his hands” — and what’s with this sudden chivalry, don’t bitches claim they want equal treatment? It would be funny if it weren’t chilling.

Update 3: Kasidhiáris, tightly surrounded by half a dozen “companions”, showed up at a police precinct as soon as the 48 hours elapsed to sue Dhoúrou, Kanélli and the TV station, and to demand that the state put taps on the phone of everyone he sued as well as on the phone of the (female) justice who issued his arrest warrant.

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My pappoú was a Metaxas-ite before World War II, tortured and killed suspected communists during the Civil War while staying safely behind the front lines as a cop, and supported the junta. He also beat my yiayiá and all three kids savagely, cheated on her flagrantly, denied them money for food whenever that suited his manipulative purposes, and sexually abused my aunt.Fascism doesn’t always begin at home, but it usually finds its way back there.If he were still alive, he’d be a Golden Dawn supporter.(PS: Like your transliterations.)

Hello, Joseph! Yes, those who think that the private and the public can be separated are fooling themselves. You can almost invariably tell just about everything about a man by how he treats his wife or daughter(s). I make a point of transliterating Hellenic names as accurately as possible — the usual Anglo approximations are cringe-inducing to my eyes and ears.

Man gives Commie comeuppance. Of course his action will have supporters, especially those whose misogyny is otherwise disapproved. Would amyone have defended him if he had merely beaten a prostitute, or have felt compelled to add they disapproved of prostitution?

Golden Dawn has assaulted others, as I mentioned — in some cases with clubs, knives and guns. In most cases, the victims were “marginals”, so they got plenty of people to defend the act. When political opponents pointed the thuggery out, they were called unpatriotic and/or decadent.

And yet some people seem genuinely surprised when protagonists of the extreme right turn to physical violence. I mean, the very ideology there, which is effectively always a simplistic “us vs them” scenario, implies and leads to violence, including (mass) murder if left loose. Yet many people, even if not on the political right, prefer to assume that the holocaust was a singular, irregular, unpredictable and unrepeatable event, while actually it was the ultimate logical conclusion of the nazi ideology, and can indeed happen again as long as that ideology has not sufficiently disappeared – which means we might have to remain wary of it for a very long time.

Mephane: My people know about this. We lived it during both the civil war and the junta. But fear and anger has a way of killing people’s minds.

Calvin — he even asked that everyone’s phones be wiretapped (including that of the [female] justice who issued the warrant for his arrest).

I also saw an interview by his father, who said that his boy knows about “honor” because they didn’t read him pansy stuff when he was a kid, they read him the life of Hercules. Also, that he loved to dance and could have become a career dancer. Shades of Hitler and his watercolors.

And his robbery/assault trial has been postponed yet again: it is at the cusp of expiring, according to the statute of limitations. He’s playing the system.

This past weekend a friend told me that the unemployment rate for college graduates in Spain is currently 50 percent. I replied that if things don’t improve soon, Europe may see yet another maniacal nutjob and his thugs come to power by declaring that they – and only they – can bring their people back to their former glory. Then I see what you posted, Athena. Guess it wasn’t just a “lucky” guess.

What also really bothers me is that something this public and this dramatically awful I only learned about from your blog. Not that I can keep up with every bit of international news, but I would presume something like that would make at least some kind of headline in America. No, instead I get to learn that Snookie had nude photos of herself made public.

Along with all the other garbage I see in everyday life in the news and in person, I am finding it harder and harder to not completely despair about the human race. People can tell there have always been bad times, etc., but unlike in the past, groups now have unprecedented access to forms of media to spread their poison like nothing before, along with weapons that could take out whole cities and more at once – and I am not even talking about nuclear devices.

Part of me wants to say that if people are stupid and vile enough to want to be lead by such trash, then they deserve whatever they get. The problem is that we will all suffer from their actions. I used to think George W. Bush was bad enough, but he seems like a joke compared to what is out there.

There is a reason that thousands of Soviets mobbed Stalin’s casket at his funeral in bare adulation even after he had killed 35 million of his own people – more than Hitler during World War 2.

Even though this news from Greece is horrible, I thank you for bringing it up, Athena. Your actions may help to make a difference.

Larry, the video made it around the world, with the exception of the US. Similar to Spain, the unemployment in Greece is 50% among women and the 18-25 age bracket. This means they can’t start families and they’re also migrating en masse. The problem with “people deserve what they get” is that these people were voted in by just 7% of the population. Like the Teabaggers, Golden Dawners take up a disproportionate amount of bandwidth — and they pull the Overton window way down.

That Nazi’s reaction to being arrested reminds me of what that crazy Italian PM did among other things: When his wife publicly complained about his rampant infidelity, he demanded that she publicly apologize for daring to complain about his behavior!

Barkeron, I am not an economist, but economists have been telling the politicians for several years what they might do to avert this catastrophe — something closer to what the US did in 2009. Some are famous names (Krugman, Stieglitz, etc). Someone who has done so with very specific proposals that make sense is Yánis Varoufákis (http://yanisvaroufakis.eu/). Germany does not want to give up its primacy, so its leaders (aided by bankers, IMF officials, etc) are presenting the devastation as a natural outcome of moral lapses on the part of the ailing countries, rather than as a structural weakness of the haphazard nature of the EU fiscal union.

Larry, today another representative of Golden Dawn said that they intend to do the same when they enter Parliament — and nobody can stop them because they’re elected representatives. He also said that they will remove children of immigrants from daycare centers and schools. Of course, one-on-one they run away. They become brave when they run in packs.

Athena: Given that the Federal Government in the U.S. basically just gave a trillion dollars to the felonious banking “industry” with no consequences, no real regulations and no real prosecutions….do you really think that TARP, as it was organized in the United States, was a solution? Especially as the banking “industry”* learned nothing from this and continues to engage in speculative behavior?

As the Americna economy tumbles into recession…or worse…I’m not sure holding up the Bush/Obama giveaway as an example makes sense???

Brian, I said “something like” meaning something more than one-note austerity — and the US situation was/is very different from the European one. Also, I referred to Varoufákis; he’s not the only one whose analysis makes sense but he’s the most articulate.

“When a country like Spain goes in to save a failing bank like Bankia – and does so by buying stock in the bank – the government is putting its citizens in a “first loss” position that protects the bondholders at public expense. This has been called “nationalization” because Spain now owns most of the stock, but the rescue has no element of restructuring at all. All of the bank’s liabilities – even to its own bondholders – are protected at public expense. So in order to defend bank bondholders, Spain is increasing the public debt burden of its own citizens. This approach is madness, because Spain’s citizens will ultimately suffer the consequences by eventual budget austerity or risk of government debt default. ”

“The way to restructure a bank is to take it into receivership, write down the bad assets, wipe out the stockholders and much of the subordinated debt, and then recapitalize the remaining entity by selling it back into the private market. Depositors don’t lose a dime. While the U.S. appropriately restructured General Motors – wiping out stock, renegotiating contracts, and subjecting bondholders to haircuts – the banking system was largely untouched.”